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Heather Kent and Ashlyn Munro

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Post #3 Watchlist:  Use of Scientific Sounding Language

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Post #3 Watchlist:  Use of Scientific Sounding Language

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Use of scientific sounding language Definition: Beliefs, practices, or claims that appear scientific but lack real evidence to support it's scientific method.

Connection: In the video, "Does a Gua Sha Work?" Dr. Laura Coral, a dermatologist, analyzes the popular TikTok trend of using Gua Sha; a traditional Chinese face massage tool typically made of healing crystals. She talks about the alleged advantages, like enhancing circulation and decreasing puffiness, and assesses the scientific method to back up these assertions. Dr. Coral later then confirms that there is no definitive scientific data to support these claims.

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Does a Gua Sha Work? Dermatologist reacts to TikTok Trend | Curology

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Post #4 Watchlist: Deliberately Creates Mystery

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Post #4 Watchlist: Deliberately Creates Mystery

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Deliberately creates mystery Definition: Someone or something that purposely creates a mystery, creates questions that cannot be answered.

Connection: This article talks about why mysteries are so fascinating to people. It talks about why people seek mysteries. I can use this article for the critical thinking process. It is best to evaluate source with articles like this to make sure you are getting the correct information.

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In the photograph 'Behind the Old Painting' (on the cover of this issue), a teenage girl peers behind a portrait hanging on a wall. A taller friend has placed a protective hand on her shoulder. In the foreground, a third girl looks to the right, towards something just beyond the range of the lens. The girls' clothes - calf length skirts, blouses, and flats - belong to another era, adding to the eerie atmosphere and sense of distance from contemporary life. The photo depicts a moment of discovery, but the viewer can't see what's been revealed.

The photo is part of fine art and commercial photographer Holly Andres' Sparrow Lane series. This 2008 collection of 15 photographs features young women exploring colourful, highly decorated interiors and leafy landscapes in photos with titles like 'Outside the Forbidden Bedroom' [above] and 'The Magic Elixir'. The photos tell a story, but I don't know exactly what it is. The photos are captivating, and deeply mysterious. I can't stop looking at them.

'In the simplest sense, a mystery is something we don't know the answer to. Mysteries are about trying to find answers,' says Les Lancaster, professor emeritus of transpersonal psychology at Liverpool John Moore University and the founding director of the Alef Trust, a Wirral-based online education non-profit. 'If we didn't ask questions about what is going on and why, we'd still be at the level of apes,' Lancaster says. 'Mysteries help us expand our horizons, and give us a greater repertoire for interacting with the world.'

Consider the mystery novel, which Lancaster says 'is engaging in its own right. The plot is a microcosm of what's going on in the mind all the time - discovering a question, gathering the pieces, or clues, and finding an answer.' That's my cue.

What makes mysteries so alluring?
Real or imaginary, mysteries have several uniquely enticing features. Mystery fiction, for instance, is mentally engaging in a way that other literary genres are not, argues Alan Goldman, philosophy professor emeritus at the College of William & Mary. Mysteries require readers use their cognitive abilities to interpret clues as well as their imaginations to identify with characters including the detective, and, in crime fiction, the culprit(s). Mysteries engage us emotionally, usually via vicarious excitement and fear. They also ask us to understand both the novel's structure and the author's style.

Mysteries may also intrigue us because developing an understanding of characters is more important in this than in other genres, according to Ohio State University School of Communication professor Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick and her co-author, Caterina Keplinger. The urge to form impressions about others is intrinsic.

Fan preferences also play a role in mysteries' appeal, observes Dolf Zillmann, professor emeritus of communication and psychology at the University of Alabama. For instance, some fans enjoy mysteries because they like to have their deductions confirmed, while others appreciate being surprised by the solution.

A third group enjoys the genre's inherent uncertainty, Zillmann adds. While uncertainty is traditionally associated with anxiety and nervousness, investigators at University of Virginia and Harvard University demonstrated that people's good moods last longer in uncertain conditions, provided they know the outcome will be positive - in this case, a solution to the mystery will be presented (Wilson et al., 2005). Moreover, the anticipation that accompanies the wait for a (presumably) satisfying resolution is itself often pleasurable (Loewenstein, 1987; Monfort et al., 2015; Luo et al., 2018).

Finally, the structure of mysteries spurs interest. Unlike many other forms of entertainment, mysteries usually start with the outcome, such as the discovery of a murder victim; the initiating event (the murder) isn't revealed until the end. The non-chronological order of the story triggers curiosity (Knobloch et al., 2004).

The need to know
Curiosity, along with surprise, interest, doubt, and other affective states, is an epistemic emotion (Vogl et al., 2020), or an emotion related to a desire for knowledge and understanding (Scarantino & de Sousa, 2018). Curiosity can be understood as 'a form of cognitively-induced deprivation that arises from the perception of a gap in knowledge or understanding, or an information gap', according to an influential 1994 paper by George Loewenstein, co-director of the Center for Behavioral Decision Research at Carnegie Mellon University.

'The promise of knowledge is alluring,' says psychology professor Kou Murayama of the University of Reading, and the head of its Motivation Science Lab. 'We evolved in a way that makes us attracted to missing information, or to things that we do not know... knowing information is adaptive for animals' survival... You need to know where the food is, who is reliable, etc.' The curiosity that drives us to learn the solution to a detective story can be understood as 'a generalization of the basic motivation to seek information' (Kidd & Hayden, 2015).

Obviously, not all of the things we don't know intrigue us. Murayama explains that's because 'For the knowledge we don't have to be attractive, we need to be aware of the information gap... mysteries are seductive because they make people aware of that gap. Then, either consciously or subconsciously, you expect a rewarding experience for obtaining the missing information or knowledge' (Murayama et al., 2019; FitzGibbon et al., 2020). Preventing access to information (like when the police refuse to let the protagonist view the crime scene), 'also makes people aware of what they do not know,' Murayama adds.

'Mysteries have almost all the factors that we've identified as triggering curiosity,' says Dr Russell Golman, a mathematician-turned-behavioural economist who works with Loewenstein (e.g. see Golman & Loewenstein, 2016). In addition to immediately alerting us to the information gap, mysteries often concern a naturally attention-grabbing subject: crime. 'Crime makes any related unknown information feel important,' Golman says. 'Mysteries that deal with romance may be similarly interesting, because romance also naturally grabs attention... From an evolutionary psychology perspective, people are naturally attuned to information relevant for survival or reproduction.'

Moreover, 'Mysteries are usually told as stories, and there's a narrative flow, with twists and turns,' Golman notes. A well-designed mystery 'sets you up to believe something. Subsequent surprises make you question these beliefs.' Mysteries' capacity to surprise us is integral to their appeal, he says.

'One of the insights George [Loewenstein] had about information gaps was that as you begin to get closer to the answer, the more interested you get. We think, paradoxically, that uncertainty can draw in your attention, and that obtaining information also draws in attention. Things that are uncertain and keep giving us more pieces of information attract the most attention from us,' Golman explains.

Finally, with mysteries, 'You get the feeling that if you just get the right piece of information, you could make sense of the whole thing,' Golman says. 'There's the potential for an epiphany.'

The mysteries that elude us
But conundrums may also engage our interest on a deeper level. 'There is a mystery at the core of our being', Lancaster says. 'What we call the unconscious is mysterious by definition, since we cannot consciously know distinctly what is there, though we gather hints, or clues, about the unconscious core. I would say that it's this mystery that sets us up to be engaged with other mysteries.'

'All the great psychotherapists have shown us that whatever is going on at the surface is the tip of the iceberg,' Lancaster continues. 'There's so much more going on unconsciously. The whole process of psychoanalysis is trying to get a handle on what we don't know. The fact that everything about us is not transparent, even to ourselves, is an aspect of mystery.'

'There are pieces of us, of our psyches, that aren't integrated,' Lancaster continues. These pieces, which we might glimpse as Freudian slips, or remembered images from dreams, 'do not readily fit into the narrative we construct about ourselves to explain things we don't know or understand. And yet, at some level, we do recognise that these pieces of the psyche are little openings to the unconscious.'

The puzzles we enjoy mulling over can mirror our own inner mysteries: hard-to-decipher clues resemble the fragmented psyche pieces we encounter, and the detective can function as what Jung called a 'psychopomp', a kind of guide that allows the ego to connect with the unconscious. Just as the detective puts together the clues to reveal truths, the psychopomp helps us recognise the real meaning of these psyche fragments.

Exploring mysteries isn't just for people in therapy, or artists, Lancaster points out: 'Most scientific discoveries come up by accident, on some level. It's a myth to think we logically come up with answers. The answer's not in the test tube, the answer is in our imaginations. And the way we work with imagination is through mystery. To the extent that we engage with the mystery, we gain insight and enrich our minds.'

Engaging with mystery
My quest to understand mysteries now takes me back to the photographer we met at the outset, Holly Andres. 'My creative process is probably similar to solving a mystery', she says. The mystery begins when she is drawn to an idea, though she's not always sure why, or what the finished artwork will look like. Sometimes, an experience, memory, or conversation 'elicits images in the form of a mental filmstrip of sorts,' Andres explains. 'If the images are particularly vivid or surreal, they'll trigger a physiological sensation. This feeling is unpredictable, but can't be ignored. And then, sometimes I set out to recreate one of these mental filmstrips.'

The Sparrow Lane series was inspired in part by a conversation Andres had about the Nancy Drew novels. 'I had read most of the books when I was a young girl, and although I couldn't recall a single plot, I realised the provocative images from the book covers were still nestled somewhere in my mind,' she says. 'I became interested in making a series about the precarious transition to womanhood... when a female starts to feel simultaneously vulnerable and empowered.' So Andres drew on the conventions of the Nancy Drew narratives and illustrations to create an elliptical narrative about domestic secrets and adolescent discoveries, in which 'I could embed these psychosexual metaphors, and also show moments of awakening, discovery, and awareness of an outside threat.'

Sourcing props and wardrobe from a thrift store, Andres tells me she will 'sink into this Zen-like space when I get really hyper aware and sensitive to all of these objects.' Then on the day of the shoot, Andres refers to her shot list to realise specific moments she's envisioned. 'Then I try to couple this consciously prepared vision with an attempt to capture natural uncertainty... If I can be open to moments of serendipity and ways to deviate from my plan, then sometimes something really beautiful and interesting and better than what I planned will happen.' This sounds like the moment of epiphany Golman mentions.

When I ask Andres, 'what is behind the old painting?', she says she doesn't know. Sparrow Lane's narrative is open to interpretation, and even when Andres knows her photos' secrets, she doesn't reveal them. She wants viewers to have the potential to fill in the blanks, and find their own solutions.

From the mundane to the mysterious
When Holly Andres told me she didn't know what was behind the old painting, I was disappointed. Rationally, I knew that the painting was a prop, but the idea that Andres had extended her creation into reality was very appealing.

I rarely encounter mysteries outside of novels; most of the time I'm fully occupied with straightforward questions, like how to get my four-year-old to eat something besides fish sticks. Compared with my daily routine, the idea of a mystery - something hidden that I might discover, and derive greater understanding from knowing about - is immensely romantic. An unexpected, and invaluable, gift.

Mysteries, fictional or real, fully realised or merely hinted at, offer so much richness. They allow us to be absorbed by something other than our own concerns, satisfy our curiosity, and enjoy the sense of realisation and accomplishment that comes from turning bits of information into meaningful stories.

But maybe what I like best about mysteries is the promise of more. I hope readers will respond to my article with more: more pieces to fit together, more layers of meaning, more to be discovered, more to wonder at.

BOX: How the brain responds to mysteries
Exposure to certain stimuli activates the brain's reward circuit, where the things we want and are motivated to obtain are evaluated and processed. These activated pathways encourage us to seek rewarding experiences, and reinforce the behaviours that allow us to attain them. 'Rewards' traditionally refer to necessities like food, shelter and warmth, or tangible items like money or goods. But a 2009 fMRI study found that trivia questions also prompted activity in subjects' reward circuits. As the researchers noted, 'curiosity is a form of reward anticipation' (Kang et al., 2009). Others have also found that 'the reward value of information is processed in the same way as conventional rewards, like food or money' (Kobayashi & Hsu, 2019).

While information is rewarding because it allows for better decision-making, 'Information can also be traded (bragged about, compared with what friends think),' observes Colin F. Camerer, director of the California Institute of Technology's Center for Social and Decision Neuroscience, and an author of the fMRI study. 'Even if information does not have any immediate value, the brain has a general hunger for just knowing for the sake of knowing.'

But isn't trivia a little, well, trivial? Murayama suggests that the type of questions used in the fMRI study can trigger curiosity acutely, but it won't last so long because there's a lack of contextual knowledge. 'Mysteries could be more compelling because readers have abundant knowledge about the context.' Echoing Loewenstein's ideas, he adds that 'the more knowledge you have about the topic, the more compelling the missing information would be'.

BOX: Exploring the house of your mind
At the interactive art installation House of Eternal Return, visitors explore a purpose-built two-storey house and the dozens of rooms, tunnels, and zones that surround it. People come here to find and interpret hundreds of clues about the family that lived at - and disappeared from - the house. The entire production is lodged in a 20,000 square foot former bowling alley, the creation of arts and entertainment non-profit Meow Wolf in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

The House of Eternal Return provides an unusual experience: a truly immersive live encounter with mystery. Can this sense of mystery be accessed in real life, and if so, how? Joanna Garner, a playwright and Meow Wolf's Senior Story Creative Director offers, 'When developing new story experiences, we talk a lot about apophenia,' or the tendency to see connections or meaningful patterns where none exist. At Meow Wolf, 'We instil in participants a sense that connections and patterns can exist everywhere, and that they should look for them'. Exercising the imagination, looking for patterns, and meaning-making can help people approach mystery.

'Constantly ask "What if?", and "What else?"' Garner adds. 'Cultivate the practice of exploring the house of your mind. As a writer, I often try to chase the feelings of fear and excitement in my creative practice, as both signal me to go deeper or farther.' And don't dismiss your own ideas too quickly. After all, to create a mystery, or to recognize one when it appears, 'You have to get weird,' Garner concludes. So 'Get weird!'

Elizabeth Michaelson Monaghan is a New York City based freelance writer and editor.
https://elizabeth michaelson monaghan.com/

Key sources
FitzGibbon, L., Lau, J.K.L., & Murayama, K. (2020). The seductive lure of curiosity: Information as a motivationally salient reward. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 35, 21-27.
Goldman, A.H. (2011). The appeal of the mystery. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 69(3), 261-272.
Golman, R. & Loewenstein, G. (2016). Information gaps: A theory of preferences regarding the presence and absence of information. Decision, 5(3), 143-164.
Kang J.K., Hsu H., Krajbich I.M. et al. (2009). The wick in the candle of learning: Epistemic curiosity activates reward circuitry. Psychological Science, 20(8), 963-973.
Knobloch-Westerwick, S. & Keplinger, K. (2009). Mystery appeal: Effects of uncertainty and resolution on the enjoyment of mystery. Media Psychology, 8(3), 193-212.
Lancaster, B.L. (2018). Re-veiling the revealed: Insights into the psychology of 'enlightenment' from the Kabbalah. International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 37(2), 73-87.
Loewenstein, G. (1994). The psychology of curiosity: A review and reinterpretation. Psychological Bulletin, 116(1), 75-98.
Wilson, T.D., Centerbar, D.B., Kermer, D.A. & Gilbert, D.T. (2005). The pleasures of uncertainty: Prolonging positive moods in ways people do not anticipate. Journal of Personality and Social Science, 88(1), 5-21.
Zillmann, D. (1991). The logic of suspense and mystery. In D. Zillmann, & J. Bryant, (Eds.), Responding to the Screen: Reception and Reaction Processes. Routledge.

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In the photograph 'Behind the Old Painting' (on the cover of this issue), a teenage girl peers behind a portrait hanging on a wall. A taller friend has placed a protective hand on her shoulder. In the foreground, a third girl looks to the right, towards something just beyond the range of the lens.

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Post #5 Watchlist: Convinces by Faith and Belief

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Post #5 Watchlist: Convinces by Faith and Belief

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Convinces by faith and belief Definition: A strong belief in faith or your own thinking even if science and evidence proves that it is wrong.

Connection: This photo is of a quote by Carl Sagan that talks about how you cant convince a believer of anything. This photo has demonstrable validity. People who blindly believes have barriers to critical thinking, especially a distorted view of truth.

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Ancient Wisdom Definition: The use of knowledge that was found thousands of years ago. This knowledge is not up to date with what we know now even though people think it is.

Connection: This website critical thinks about ancient wisdom and why it should not be believed. The author applied skepticism with ancient wisdom and also debunked the idea of it being real.

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If a remedy for your problem has been around for a long time, will it work, or is that a red flag?

How to recognise this tactic

People who use this tactic try to persuade you that a certain explanation, treatment or model must be correct because it's been around for a long time.

I don't go in for ancient wisdom
I don't believe just 'cos ideas are tenacious it means they are worthy

Tim Minchin, Australian-British comedian/musician, 2009

Why do people use this tactic?

People turn to this tactic when they lack scientific evidence to support their models. They want tor persuade you that because the traditional view has persisted for a long time, it outweighs the scientific evidence. But unfortunately, these models usually persist for reasons that have little to do with their success in explaining the real world.

What's wrong with this tactic

Believe it or not, there is no reason why an idea that's been around for a long time should be correct. Many ancient models have been kept alive by anecdotal evidence, appeals to authority, wishful thinking, superstitions and other dubious strategies. They are not supported by the sort of real-world evidence that comes from controlled experiments or randomized controlled trials. The four humor theory, discussed in the Example below, illustrates how an erroneous ancient model succumbed to scientific investigation.

What to do when confronted by this tactic

Don't be tempted to believe that the longevity of a model justifies its acceptance. It might help to keep in mind that blood-letting (based on the four humors model) was an accepted practice for centuries before modern medicine showed how harmful it is. Always ask for evidence that's been gathered from real-world tests. If there's none, the model is worthless. You can also check whether there are any systematic reviews of the model - try the Cochrane Collaboration for medical issues.

It's a good idea to ask about a mechanism for the model. If there is none, or if the mechanism proposed refers to concepts and processes that are at odds with accepted science, the model is almost certainly worthless.

Variations and related tactics

This tactic is also known as the appeal to antiquity. It is sometimes regarded as a type of appeal to authority. I prefer to think of it as more an appeal to anecdotal evidence - people think that centuries of anecdotes pile up to provide evidence. But, as the old maxim says: the plural of anecdote is not data.

Examples

The 2nd century 'four humor' model of human temperaments promoted by Galen led to the practices of blood-letting and trepanation as treatments for disease. These practices were continued until the 19th century when the rise of scientific models in medicine showed that, far from being beneficial, they were actually harmful. Discoveries in anatomy and physiology had shown the the mechanism behind the four humor theory had no basis.

Traditional Chinese Medicine is based largely on the appeal to ancient wisdom. Here's an excellent post from Steven Novella at Science-Based Medicine describing its pitfalls and showing how its purported mechanisms are completely divorced from reality.

Climate deniers use a form of this tactic when they point out that the earth's climate has changed in the past and then claim that the present episode of change is nothing unusual. Ian Plimer implies this argument in the first two of the "101 questions" he proposed in his 2011 book How to get expelled from school: a guide to climate change for pupils, parents and punters. The evidence shows clearly that his argument is wrong, and that recent global warming and climate change definitely is unusual and furthermore it is caused by emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. The mechanism is well understood. The Australian Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency has issued a detailed reply to all of Plimer's questions.

The New Age notion that Mayan calendars predict the end of the world on 12 December 2012 depends on an appeal to ancient wisdom. People who fall for this idea assume that the Mayans had knowledge we don't and were able to predict the future. In fact, no such prediction was made, and if one had been, it would deserve no credibility. Various mechanisms have been suggested as causes of the apocalypse, but they too lack credibility.

Add to the list of examples by leaving a comment.

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Appeals to ancient wisdom - trusting traditional trickery

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If a remedy for your problem has been around for a long time, will it work, or is that a red flag? How to recognise this tactic People who use this tactic try to persuade you that a certain explana...

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Ideological Support Definition: The use of personal beliefs, used to justify and promote claims, without the support of of scientific evidence.

Connection: Homeopathy practices are based on ideological beliefs as it prioritizes natural approaches to health over evidence based medications. This is due to the distrust of modern medicine.

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Mystical energy Definition: a phrase frequently used in spiritual contexts to refer to a kind of non-physical, unknown power that is thought to connect, affect, or emerge from the universe. It is based on belief systems that consider reality as interlinked by invisible forces rather than being a scientifically defined concept.

Connection: CBC Kids News contributor Alexia Sabau talks to Dr. Melissa Lem to find out if there’s any actual science behind the trend of crystal healing. Applying the scientific method and conducting this experiment resulted in the test subjects concluding that although some reported feeling lighter with a “buzzing sensation”, the majority felt no difference before or after holding the healing crystals.

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Crystal healing: Fake or fact? | CBC Kids News

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Red herring Definition: Information that is meant to be misleading or distracting so you don’t realize the actual problem.

Connection: This photo is showing a fish performing and trying to distract the other fish from the fish behind the curtain. This is exactly what a red herring is. It is a distraction for the thing that people are not supposed to know or see.

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Post #10 Red Flags: Suppression by Authorities

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Post #10 Red Flags: Suppression by Authorities

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Suppression by authorities Definition: Intentionally withholding scientific information so people don’t find out the truth or to make people spend more money.

Connection: This article talks about how the government can cover up certain articles and information, especially about UFO’s and aliens.

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Decades of declassified memos, internal reports, and study projects create the sense that the government doesn't have satisfying answers for the most perplexing sightings.

There aren't many secrets that John Brennan doesn't know. He spent 25 years in the CIA, became the White House homeland-security adviser, and then returned to the CIA as its director. If a question interested him, he could've commanded legions of analysts, officers, surveillance networks, and tools to find the answer. Yet in a December 2020 interview with the economist Tyler Cowen, Brennan admitted, somewhat tortuously, that he was flummoxed by the wave of recent reporting about UFOs: "Some of the phenomena we're going to be seeing continues to be unexplained and might, in fact, be some type of phenomenon that is the result of something that we don't yet understand and that could involve some type of activity that some might say constitutes a different form of life."

That roundabout and convoluted comment piqued my interest. Anything that puzzled Brennan was worth looking into. For the next two years, I dove into the history of the U.S. government's involvement in UFOs as part of writing my new book, and along the way I've become convinced that a cover-up is real-it's just not the one that you think. Plenty of revelations, declassified documents, and public reports suggest active, ongoing deception. Even today, the government is surely hiding information about its knowledge and working theories about what exists in the skies above.

But the cover-up that I believe exists is far more mundane than concealing intelligence that would forever alter our understanding of ourselves and our universe. There are some basic, obvious reasons why the government is withholding knowledge about what are now called "unidentified anomalous phenomena," or UAPs. Some public UAP reports are likely the government's secret projects, technologies, or operations. According to the CIA, test and development flights of the U-2 and the Oxcart spy planes "accounted for more than one-half of all UFO reports during the late 1950s." The military has more secret test flights, development projects, and special craft than most people realize. (The Pentagon's new next-generation B-21 stealth bomber just had its first test flight this month.)
Read: UFOs are officially mainstream
Other reported UFO sightings are advanced technologies from foreign adversaries-such as Russia, China, and Iran-being tested against U.S. defenses. The government doesn't want to give away what's been detected and what hasn't. Rare announcements from officials confirm this, such as when the Pentagon said at a congressional hearing in 2022 that what first appeared to be out-of-this-world, glowing, triangle-shaped crafts were actually just terrestrial drones photographed through night-vision lenses. Plenty of strange incidents, like a mysterious swarm of objects that harassed Navy ships off the coast of California in 2019, indicate that there's a lot more to say about foreign programs being tested against U.S. defenses.

Perhaps certain agencies are silent on those programs because they don't have enough information. The government is a maze of operations, classified efforts, and so-called Special Access Programs (SAPs) that make up the defense, homeland security, and intelligence world. No single entity or bureaucrat has a full understanding of what the others are doing, leading to repeated confusion about whether a UFO or UAP sighting is genuine. In 1947, after a civilian pilot reported a strange encounter in the Pacific Northwest that sparked a national fascination with "flying saucer" sightings, FBI executives became convinced that these peculiar crafts were a secret military program. A more tragic incident occurred the following year, when Air Force Captain Thomas Mantell was dispatched to pursue a UFO reported to the Kentucky State Police. He died racing after it, crashing on a farm along the Tennessee border. Military officials were perplexed: Did a UFO down a U.S. fighter pilot? The answer remained unknown until the 1950s, when the Air Force's UFO-hunting unit, Project Blue Book, pieced together that the "UFO" Mantell chased was actually a secret Navy research balloon under development by a defense contractor-the cereal manufacturer General Mills.

However, I believe the UFO cover-up is about more than state secrets. The government routinely hides information important and meaningless on all manner of subjects, regardless of whether legitimate national-security concerns are involved. Its default position is to stonewall, especially to conceal embarrassing revelations. After reading thousands of pages of government reports, I believe that the government's uneasiness over its sheer ignorance drives its secrecy. It just doesn't know very much.

Officials are, at the end of the day, clueless about what a certain portion of UFOs and UAPs actually are, and they don't like to say so. After all, "I don't know" is a terribly uncomfortable response for a bureaucracy that spends more than $900 billion a year on homeland security and national defense.

Decades of declassified memos, internal reports, and study projects create the sense that the government doesn't have satisfying answers for the most perplexing sightings. In internal documents written before the Freedom of Information Act was passed in 1966, officials, who had no sense that ordinary civilians would read their work, admit that they simply lacked credible explanations. In a then-classified 1947 letter that led to the Air Force's original effort to study these "flying saucer" reports, Lieutenant General Nathan Twining seemed as baffled as anyone, writing that some of the reported craft "lend belief to the possibility that some of the objects are controlled either manually, automatically, or remotely." Project Sign, as the effort became known, looked at 273 sightings. After a year, it issued a secret report. Although many UFO sightings were either "errors of the human mind and senses" or "conventional aerial objects," it said, it couldn't explain all of them. Some sightings were just too weird to rule on one way or another. "Proof of non-existence is equally impossible to obtain unless a reasonable and convincing explanation is determined for each incident," the Project Sign team wrote.

Subsequent attempts to "solve" the mystery have consistently come up short. In 1953, the CIA-with its director and the head of scientific intelligence both bewildered by ongoing UFO reports-convened the Robertson Panel, a secret research group chaired by the Caltech physicist Howard P. Robertson. After hearing from experts and examining sighting reports, the panel concluded that there was "no evidence" that UFOs posed a threat to national security. But it used a sleight of hand to arrive at that conclusion: The researchers looked closely at only a small number of sightings, decided they seemed mundane, and extrapolated that the rest probably weren't very interesting either. The Robertson Panel couldn't explain all UFO sightings in the end-it just reckoned that, whatever they were, they weren't threatening.

Similar efforts to identify UFOs and UAPs for the past 80 years have stalled on a stubborn subset that appears truly mysterious. Usually examiners find that 5 to 20 percent of all sightings have no known explanation. Though some of that is surely a data problem-not all sightings contain enough information to solve one way or another-some really are mysteries.
Read: NASA learns the ugly truth about UFOs
Many people who study UFOs end up frustrated by the government's ignorance rather than its secrets. J. Allen Hynek, a distinguished Ohio astronomer who was involved with Project Sign and Project Blue Book, came to believe that government agencies tried to dodge questions about UFOs not because they were hiding something but because they had no actual knowledge to hide. For decades, Hynek traveled to UFO sightings around the country. He became so professionally fascinated with them that he wrote several books on the topic, coining the phrase "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and playing a bit part in the Steven Spielberg movie of the same name. He was a constant presence in the government's UFO work from the 1940s to the 1970s. Along the way, he was repeatedly frustrated by the poor answers military colleagues and higher-ups used to brush away sightings-explanations he doubted as a scientist and ones that didn't square with witness testimonies. (Once Hynek was told by his Air Force superiors to publicly dismiss a series of high-profile UFO sightings in Michigan as "swamp gas." The statement, which he delivered at a 1966 Detroit press conference, was widely mocked and so outraged the local congressman, a rising GOP star named Gerald Ford, that he pushed for the first congressional hearings on UFOs later that spring.)

After leaving government and founding the independent Center for UFO Studies, Hynek said he doubted that there was a grand government conspiracy. "There are two kinds of cover-ups," he explained in 1977. "You can cover up knowledge and you can cover up ignorance. I think there was much more of the latter than of the former."

After The New York Timesand Politicorevealed in 2017 that the Pentagon had a small-scale secret program studying UAP sightings and paranormal phenomena, and documenting bizarre encounters with seemingly unexplainable craft, Congress pressed the Department of Defense and the intelligence community to take the subject more seriously. The newly constituted All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office reported in 2022 that of 366 recent UAP sightings it had collected, a little more than half seemed normal-either drones, balloons, or trash in the sky it described as "clutter." Still, that left 171 incidents unsolved.

The AARO has consistently said that it hasn't found evidence of extraterrestrials. And the government believes that better data will show that most UAP sightings are " ordinary phenomena," according to a comprehensive report released last month. On Halloween, AARO's director, Sean Kirkpatrick, announced that his office had started a big push to collect better data from current military personnel who have UAP encounters and from former government employees or contractors who may have had experience with the subject in the past.

Many-perhaps most or nearly all-UAP sightings have conceivable explanations: classified projects, adversarial technology, sky trash. But there are almost certainly some world-changing revelations hidden among UAP reports, even if none of them turn out to be visiting aliens. Investigating them could lead to new discoveries in meteorology, astronomy, atmospheric science, and physics. Hynek's words about the government's cluelessness hint at a more intriguing truth: There is something-or, more likely, many things-out there, and none of us yet know what.
This article has been adapted from Garrett M. Graff's book UFO: The Inside Story of the U.S. Government's Search for Alien Life Here-And Out There.

​When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

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The U.S. Government UFO Cover-Up Is Real-But It's Not What You Think

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Decades of declassified memos, internal reports, and study projects create the sense that the government doesn't have satisfying answers for the most perplexing sightings.

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Post #12 Reason for belief: Emotion Connection

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Post #12 Reason for belief: Emotion Connection

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Emotional connection Definition: A heartfelt moment with a person. Emotional connection is talking about something personal to someone and they actively listen and validate your feelings.

Connection: Most mediums will find an emotional connection with their client in order to give them the best experience. This photo shows a medium who is playing the piano because of a spirit. This then comforts the boy because he has an emotional connection to the spirit. This photo can be seen as an anecdote.

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Agenticity Definition: The tendency to assign conspiracy, intention, meaning and agency to things and often at the hand of invisible beings.

Connection: In the video, the defined claim is that Avril Lavigne has been theorized to have died in the early 2000’s and replaced with a clone by the name of Melissa Vandella.

Recognize Bias: Confirmation Bias. Reviewing Avril's pictures over time and concluding that natural aging, shifts in style, or lighting variations are "proof" of a replacement to the original artist.

Evaluate Source: The source is from a drama youtuber named “SLO4N” who analyzes relevant topics on celebrities in pop culture.

Evaluate Evidence: The only concrete evidence in this claim is that her face has changed.

Summary Conclusion: Age and natural growth can shift one’s appearance, tastes, mannerisms and tendencies as our brains develop and the body’s natural hormones begin to level out as we get older.

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EXPOSING The Avril Lavigne Conspiracy Theory

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Simplicity Definition: Simplicity is defined as strange coincidences that can be predicted due to the law of large numbers.

Connection: The claim that The Simpsons has correctly predicted a number of future events emphasizes its appeal of simplicity. The anecdote insinuates the notion of the series accurately depicting (now) current events as if the future was predicted. On social media, it’s become a trend to turn to the Simpson’s for major events that can take place in the future. For example, elections, virus spreads, or even natural disasters. The series is not a reputable source, however, a lot of people genuinely believe in this theory due to how much was predicted accurately.

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Top 10 Most Surprising Simpsons Predictions That Came True

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Ideology Definition: A set of ideas that are often the basis for core beliefs, morals and decisions.

Connection: The term "7M TikTok cult" refers to a group of TikTok influencers under the 7M management, that are mainly associated with a dancing cult. This group functions under strict surveillance and has a very structured, cult-like structure. The group has been linked to extreme religious practices, controlling methods, manipulation, and secrecy; all of which are typical of cult-like activity. As they embrace a strict set of beliefs and principles, followers frequently commit themselves fully to the group's philosophy, emphasizing elements of personal growth and success to their careers in the dance industry. One key feature of cults is the emphasis on groupthink. This is evident in individual members beginning to think and behave in accordance with the leader’s views and ideals.This is a fundamental characteristic of cults. 7M TikTok Cult’s pressure to uphold the group's standards frequently drives a push for conformity in conduct, appearance, and beliefs.

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Netflix's Dancing for the Devil: The 7M TikTok Cult & How Cults Still Exist